Witch: A Great Window Switcher for Mac
I got a copy of Many Tricks’ $19 Witch today. It’s a window switcher for Mac OS X. Now this might need a bit of explanation. You probably know that you can press Command-Tab to switch applications, but you can’t choose which window – if an application has multiple windows – you’ll go to. Witch solves that problem, displaying a list of applications and their windows. You can set it to work with the Command-Tab shortcut (which is new in this version), or you can save Command-Tab for application switching and use a different shortcut for Witch.
If you look at the example above, that’s what Witch shows on my screen right now. You can see that there are two Finder windows open, and several other applications, each with a single window. By pressing Command-Tab, then pressing Tab several times, I can cycle through all those windows, and choose the one I want to bring to the front. I can also press H to hide a window, Q to quit an application, M to minimize a window, and more.
Witch is a great program that could be a bit better. There are a lot of options; a bit too many for my taste. It’s a bit daunting to set it up, if you want more than basic functionality. But you can customize the appearance, choosing font size, width of its bezel window, colors and more.
There are some quirks with Spaces. If you have several spaces set up, Witch can see the applications in those that are not visible, but not windows. So, in the above example, you see arrows next to some windows; that’s the symbol to show windows that are hidden, which also show up when windows are in other spaces. The developer told me that handling windows in spaces is complex, but that they hope to solve the issue soon.
If you work with a lot of applications, and switch a lot, Witch is for you. The ability to switch to a specific window saves a lot of time, and the control you get, from the keyboard, of applications, their windows, and their visibility is great. It make take a while to get used to the change from Command-Tab switching among applications to that of windows, but I’m already finding it a wonderful tool to streamline my work.
